In Reach Read online

  They feel their way along the creek bed, wincing at sharp rocks, teetering toward one another for balance. The cool water bathes her parched skin. The sandy creek bottom welcomes her poor old feet, as if to say, where have you been all these years?

  They walk straight out into the middle and a few yards along with the creek’s flow, when Leland stops. She stops, too, rather than risk falling over.

  “Janet, have you ever been kissed in a creek?”

  He tosses this remark over his shoulder, his eyes focused on the bank farthest away from her, so if she laughs him off or disapproves, he can pretend he was joking. She sees through his game.

  “No, Leland.” Her voice emerges soft and breathy, no wind left in her. “I don’t believe I have.”

  When he turns to face her, she’s ready for him. His lips are surprisingly soft. She’s not sure what she expected. An old man’s mouth. Dry and chapped. He knows what a good kiss is made of, tender and lingering, and the warmth that spreads through her body, even down there, surprises her. She reaches for him with the hand he’s not holding, maybe (she thinks later) for balance, but he wraps his arm around her, too, and they kiss again.

  Sweet, that’s all she’s thinking, there among the meadowlarks and cattails, her toes digging for traction in the sandy creek bed.

  There’s quite a lot of kissing after that. When she gets in the car in the alley, she scoots over close to him. Sometimes she rests her hand on his thigh while he’s driving. She waits for his call eagerly. They broaden their activities beyond the farm, long drives in the countryside, supper in Scottsbluff, always out of town, nothing to get the gossips wagging. She’s grateful for his discretion. She wonders if she should cook him a meal, but it’d be awkward, sneaking him in and out the back door, hoping nobody sees. She keeps up her activities, the card group on Sunday afternoons, Bible study on Tuesdays, shocked to realize how much open time there must have been in her life before. She doesn’t worry about Esther, who’s dead and not coming back and would never begrudge the living a moment of happiness. No, it’s not Esther that prompts them to this secrecy. Their—what is it exactly, not affair (good heavens), nor relationship—well, special friendship, feels somehow sacred. A private space they’ve created, like children who carve a haven out of hay bales, away from prying eyes of the adult and disapproving world. Janet tells only her sister that she’s been riding with a man on a three-wheeler.

  Her sister, who lives far away in Ohio and has been married fifty-seven years, asks, “Where’s this going?”

  “We’re friends.” Janet clamps her lips to keep the lilt out of her voice.

  “Are you sure that’s all?”

  “Oh, yes,” Janet says, that breathless feeling coming over her again.

  She does entertain—thoughts. No, she doesn’t want to get married again. They’re too old. One or the other of them will take sick. Or die. She doesn’t want to go through being widowed again. She doesn’t want that kind of pain. She doesn’t want to put another man to bed, like she did Carl, who died a long slow death from a combination of emphysema and corrosive arteries.

  Plus, she’s used to living alone. She and Carl found each other too late for children. He was a bachelor farmer, and she a spinster schoolteacher from down by Ogallala. They met at a dance at the Legion, and he stepped all over her feet. His embarrassment won her heart, long before he spoke of any affection for her. They’d made a good life together, though they only had ten years before he took sick. They moved to town, then. Sold the farm to his distant cousins. She nursed him until he died. Too young for Social Security, she went back to teaching history until she could retire. With her pension, Social Security, and proceeds from the farm sale, she’s doing all right.

  Without Carl or anyone else to answer to, she’s made the house her own. The year after Carl died, she painted the kitchen ceiling red. She gets some looks from the women in the Bible study, but she’s never tired of that ceiling. It speaks to her of possibility. When she got interested in Civil War history, she hung a corkboard on the dining room wall and charted the battlefields, marking each site with different colored flags according to who won; blue for Union, red for Confederate. She loves opera, unheard of among her friends out here on the prairie, and she cranks up the volume on her old (but plenty good) record player, the walls humming plaintive song. She doubts very much if Leland would tolerate a red ceiling, and she knows for a fact he has no appreciation for opera.

  But, where is this going? If he asks, she would have to consider marriage, wouldn’t she? Otherwise, what is she doing? She’d forgotten how lovely and invigorating the feeling that you matter to someone in a special way. She does care for him. It’s too late to pretend otherwise, and she’s not going to lie to herself about it. Growing old might be less fearsome together.

  She holds forth in this way, arguing with herself, refuting, rebutting, preparing, because any fool can see that they can’t simply go on riding into the sunset and kissing under the cottonwoods and parting in the back alley. Although, that is precisely what she wants. To simply go on, uncomplicated, like any young thing too naïve to consider the consequences of love.

  One day Leland parks the three-wheeler under the stand of cottonwoods. It’s late afternoon, the time of long shadows when the sun drops toward the edge of the world. He spreads a blanket, tan and red striped. She holds her hand off the edge of the blanket, letting a clump of prairie grass tickle her palm.

  “Can I ask you something, Janet?”

  She nods. Here it comes, she thinks. She perks up, interested to see what answer she will give.

  “What do you think about sex?” he says.

  Well, that is a surprise. Janet almost laughs. “What do you mean?”

  “Sex. Do you like it?”

  “What kind of question is that?” She’s thinking there are some things you do, and you don’t have to talk about them.

  “You like kissing, don’t you?”

  “Well, Leland.” She pulls herself up, sits as tall as she can, wraps her arms around her bent knees. She prides herself on her flexibility. Not many women her age can sit like this. “I’m not dead.”

  “That’s just it. We may not have that much time. I like you. When two people enjoy each other, they want to be close.”

  “I think sex is a beautiful thing.”

  “I’m glad you said that.”

  “Between two married people.” She says this plain. She’s thinking this is an odd conversation for a courtship. At their age.

  “Nobody said anything about marriage.”

  “Oh.” Oh dear. Oh my. She hadn’t considered . . . How could he think that? How could he even imagine she’d . . . ? She looks away, embarrassed.

  “Well, come on, now. We’re too old to complicate our lives like that.”

  He’s put on his coaxing voice, the one he uses to nicker to the horses across the fence, get them to come for the apples in his hand. If he thinks she’ll come running across the pasture to eat out of his hand, he has another think coming.

  She rises to her feet with as much dignity as she can muster. “Take me home, Leland.”

  It’s ruined after that. Sex is all he can talk about. Every outing ends, sooner or later, with him trying to talk her into doing something she simply cannot, will not do.

  “People will talk,” she says.

  “Who cares?”

  “I do. I have to live in this town.”

  “We can go out of town.”

  “I’m not going to sneak around.”

  “You could just leave your back door unlocked,” he tries. “I could slip in and out, be gone by morning.”

  She doesn’t dignify this with an answer.

  “I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage,” she says.

  “C’mon, Janet. Where’ve you been? This is the modern world.”

  “I don’t care what others do. That’s their choice.”

  “What are you afraid of? You’re not going to get pregnant.
”

  How dare he make her feel like an old relic? She looks him straight in the eye, defiant. “I don’t believe in it.”

  “God gave us these desires. Why wouldn’t he want us to enjoy them?”

  “Don’t blame God for this.”

  “I’m not blaming anybody.”

  “You’re saying it’s God’s fault. You’re using God to justify your own desires.”

  “So are you.” His voice rises higher. It’s not a pleasant sound.

  “I’m talking about my faith. Not desires.”

  “You don’t have any desires.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I don’t think you do. I don’t think you feel anything.”

  She says nothing. How can she say anything to this man?

  “Now you’re mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “You sure look mad.”

  “I’m disappointed.”

  “Esther never wanted sex,” he tells her one day.

  She knows that’s a lie. She wonders if he has had affairs, all along. Justified them with his crazy talk of God-given desire.

  She starts to resent how he doesn’t want to be seen with her. They attend the same church, but they never sit together. He greets her the same way he greets all the other widows, a curt nod as he passes by. Plus, he’s always talking about his investments. Why tell her he’s rich when he has no intention of sharing his wealth with her? And why, if he’s so loaded, didn’t he feel any obligation to pay back those farmers? He doesn’t want to risk dying first and have it all go to her instead of Rosalee. She knows what a prenuptial agreement is, but he’s beyond even that. He doesn’t want to share his home, his life. He wants a little back door hanky-panky, that’s all. She feels used. And dirty.

  Her sister is of no help.

  “You said you didn’t want to marry him.”

  “I don’t.

  “But you seem angry that he doesn’t ask you to marry him?”

  “You’d be mad, too, if somebody you thought cared about you expected sex but no commitment.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “C’mon.”

  “It’s the times. My own grandchildren . . .”

  “That’s different.”

  “If he asked, would you say no?”

  “I guess we’ll never find out.” With that, Janet hangs up.

  Not long after this conversation, Leland picks her up and tells her to scoot over by the door. “Don’t sit by me, if you don’t mean it.”

  “All right.” She hugs the door, head turned away, her mind out the window and riding hard over turbulent waves.

  He doesn’t take her to the farm. Instead, they drive out south of town to Courthouse and Jail Rocks, deserted sandstone monuments haunting the prairie. Legend has it that Indians used to keep prisoners here.

  He stops the car, turns to look at her. “I thought I could wear you down,” he says.

  Tight-lipped, she says, “Then you don’t know me very well.”

  “No. I guess I don’t.”

  She has nothing to say to that. They don’t look at each other.

  “Hell,” he says. “I don’t even know if I can do it. Maybe I got too old.”

  She has to laugh at that. He laughs, too. Then, it seems all right between them. They sit there a while, not bothering to get out of the car, enjoying the sagebrush and yuccas, the lone eagle soaring overhead, the grasshoppers springing from ragweed. He takes her home and drops her in the alley. They each smile, though he does not reach for her to kiss her. She gets out of the car and knows he will not call again.

  Months go by, another Thanksgiving, then Christmas, Valentine’s Day. After Easter, she plants another garden, picks early radishes and lettuce. When her sister asks, “What ever happened to Leland?” she answers, “We’re friends.”

  One day while shopping in the drug store for Q-tips and toothpaste, she hears that Leland has had a stroke. He’s lost the use of one side of his body, though they say his mind is good.

  Janet frets over him, but she can’t drive. She hears he’s in a nursing home in Scottsbluff. One Sunday, her pastor stops her briefly after the Sunday service. Pastor Glen is a young man; people like him. He’s got a houseful of kids, and that’s always a good sign.

  “Janet,” Pastor says. “I’m driving up to see Leland on Tuesday. I wondered if you’d care to ride along.”

  She peers into the pastor’s face, sees only kindness. She should have known nothing is a secret in this town.

  “I’d like that,” she says.

  At the nursing home, the pastor visits for a few minutes, offers a prayer over Leland’s ruined body, then finds an excuse to leave the room. Janet pulls a chair next to Leland’s bed, puts her hand over his good hand. His other hand lies inert against his side. He has no use of one side of his body, but he’s propped up against the headboard.

  “Janet. I’m glad to see you.”

  He looks as though he might cry. Janet pats his hand. “Now, now Leland. I’m here.”

  She looks around his room. Small, the way they are. Odors, something between disinfectant and musty, old body smell. On a set of built-in shelves, she sees he has a picture of the farm, Rosalee and her family.

  “Remember when we picked raspberries?” he says.

  “Of course, Leland.”

  “And feeding the horses over the fence.”

  She nods, though shame creeps through her, remembering how she thought of Leland coaxing her like those horses. Her throat feels full, and she’s afraid if she tries to speak, she’ll embarrass both of them.

  “And the creek.” He waggles his eyebrows a bit. She’s relieved to see his rakish humor intact.

  She rises and leans over to kiss his weathered and whiskery cheek. Low and in his ear, she says, “We had a wonderful summer.”

  He grabs at her arm, his grasp surprisingly strong. His jaw trembles. “Janet, I don’t want to live like this.”

  “Shhh.” She pats him on the back.

  “I want to go home.”

  “I know you do.”

  “They won’t let me out of here.”

  She struggles to quiet him, pats his back, but he grows only more distressed. She sits on the edge of the bed, puts her arm around his shoulders, tries to draw his head to her breast. He’s stiff and heavy, so she swings her legs up on the bed, and soon she’s lying with him, cradling him as best she can. He quiets, except for the tears soaking into her blouse front. “Now, now,” she says, and he’s calm as long as she doesn’t try to move away from him, which she has no intention of doing. She’s thinking it’s too bad that he didn’t die when he had the chance. He’s trapped now. He knows it, and she knows it, too.

  Eventually, the pastor will come to collect her for the ride home or a nurse will want to take Leland to physical therapy, and they’ll find her in this undignified pose, lying like a schoolgirl on the edge of a man’s bed, her clothes twisted awry from the awkwardness of it. She will have to stand in front of them and say good-bye. Likely, she’ll note pity and condescension in their eyes, that special combo reserved for the very old, but what does any of that matter now? Might as well stop the clocks, turn off the telephones. What’s done is done, and she braces herself for all that may be required of her.

  Waiting for the pastor, she strokes Leland’s cheek. “Oh, my dear,” she says. “My poor dear.”

  Fire on His Mind

  Afterward, Tom bought smoke alarms and put them in every room of the house. He staged fire drills day and night, especially night, when he stood with a stopwatch and timed Helen and his boys, Alex and Trent, while they tumbled out of beds and groped their way to the yard. Once he bolted the door from the outside to see if they would figure out what to do. When they didn’t emerge from the house, he was furious.

  “What the hell are you thinking?” he stormed. They were gathered in the living room. Helen, eyes heavy with sleep, slumped on the tattered couch in a thin yellow tank top and draw
string cotton shorts. She’d thrown on a flowered robe to hide her nipples from the boys. That action alone cost precious seconds. He tipped the reading lamp to shine in their faces. Helen squinted and lifted a hand, but the boys, seven and nine, looked at him wide-eyed. Scared, and well they should be. They could have burned to death.

  “Dad, what did you want us to do?” Alex asked.

  “Break a window.” He heard himself shouting. “Pick up any goddamn chair and throw it through the glass.”

  “But Dad, when I broke a window throwing a football, you got mad,” Trent said.

  He shook his head, unable to believe they could not comprehend the seriousness of this. His wife, too. Nodding away there.

  “When there’s fire . . . ,” he began.

  “But it wasn’t a fire,” Alex said. “It was you blowing your whistle. Like last time.”

  He knelt in front of them. He took each of his boys by the arm. Sitting there in their skivvies with knobby knees and scrawny chests, they looked like baby birds. “When you hear this whistle, I want you to see fire. I want you to smell fire. And then, you do whatever it takes to get the hell out of this house. Now, am I clear?”

  The boys glanced at each other. He knew that look. In another five, six years they’d be looking at each other like that all the time, as if their old man was loco. Let them.

  The first week he took a lot of showers. Washed himself over and over and still could not get the stench out of his hair. When he’d finally found those two teenagers huddled together behind a closet door, their skin had been black and crispy. He didn’t tell Helen that. He’d reached out, his volunteer fireman’s glove awkward and thick and protecting him, and the boy’s shoulder caved like a marshmallow cooked too long over coals. That crinkled coating that slakes away.